


Appease your Positional Entropy

by LavenderGhost



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Accidental environmental metaphors, Biochemistry, Biochemistry AU, Bioinformatics, Chess, Conceptualization of the Other, Everyone cherishes Jake, Generous serving of sappiness, Hints of mental health not being optimal, I don't go into gender at all but know they are trans thank you, Introspection, Isolation, Light-Hearted, M/M, One of those fics with oddly specific things, Rare Jade and Dirk antagonism, Rare Jake and Kanaya friendship, Real sciency frustrations, Reconciliation, Slice of Life, Technically humanstuck for at least Kanaya, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, a little comedic, data science, no SBurb AU, science AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderGhost/pseuds/LavenderGhost
Summary: Oddly specific AUs serve the double purpose of immersion into an area of experience perhaps previously unfamiliar to the reader and that of marvelling at the fact you can place a character in any context and figure out how they'd dance around.The purpose of this study is to expand the scope of dirkjake by a slight but non negligible margin with one such specific AU, as well as a few rare friendship matchups of interest to the author.
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26
Collections: DirkJake Big Bang 2k21





	Appease your Positional Entropy

**Author's Note:**

> This was a collab with [Bugs](https://www.instagram.com/rancorousrats/) who drew the wonderful illustrations throughout.

Scorching sunlight filters through the big panelled windows of this triangular architectural anomaly of a room you like to escape to away from the eyes of everyone when you’re not particularly feeling up to your nines. The A/C is broken and no one likes to stay in what is practically a human-sized convection oven in the summer. No one except you, that is.

You couldn’t think of a better place to give you a little solace while pausing your work day and gobbling up your tupperware-d chicken and rice after spending the entire morning in the company of an FPLC machine purifying your protein of study in the cold room, surely only to fail at crystallising it tomorrow, again.

Squirmy little fellow. Can’t seem to stay still and mesh into an orderly, understandable pattern so that you can look at the shape of it, no matter what you try.

You stab at your food while you recall — trying out every buffer combination you could think of, changing the pH, the temperature, the size of the droplets, going on ResearchGate for other clueless scientists who have tread this path before, leaving the wells in the cold room for days, weeks, on end — maybe it was feeling shy with you staring daggers at it.

Ah, you desecrated that chicken. Barely got to enjoy it, what with getting lost in one avenue of your daily frustrations. After grabbing the mug containing the teabag that you left aside seeping with your perfected ratio of hot and cold water from one of the many dispensers, you impetuously rise up and pace to one of the wall-encompassing windows, risking a burn.

You sip your tea, holding it so close to your face that your glasses fog up, obscuring the single mango tree standing in the inner patio. Though you’re not running by any quote unquote official information, you’re pretty sure your cousin Jade — illustrious physicist-turned-plant-biologist just a door away — was the one responsible for planting it there.

Jade was the one who recommended you for your current position, equally eager to see you put your skills to use in something that excited you as to, well, just to see you more often. Heh. Best not think about how you’re petering out in both respects.

She’s got that thing this afternoon she does every so often where she gives away assorted rare seedlings. You make a note to work on point two and get yourself a whole living being that you can work on not excessively neglecting at the same time.

The tiny white scratchy tell-tale signs of repeated feeble wire sponge-scrubbing on the tea stained bottom of the mug stare back at you. Enough pondering.

With unearned regained vigor you spring to the small kitchen at the end of the hall.

“Hey Jakey! Oh did’ya already eat? I only just now got out of a never-ending meeting, I’m starving.” Roxy spots you as they input a time that's twice as long what you did when you first got here into the overworked microwave.

“Rox, most rad remarkable stalwart of respectable buddies. ‘fraid I did,” you plunk your stuff into the kitchen sink. “The cold room had me anticipating mealtime with gusto, so I just went ahead by myself.”

“Ah you’ll miss out on meeting the fresh new Roxy team addition.”

“I don’t think your boss would appreciate you calling it that.”

“Shoosh… she’s barely ever here. What’ya been up to anyways? I see you every day but I never really see you y’know?”

“Ahaha, you’re not missing much Roxy, trust me. Just been jake’ing around I s’ppose. What did you say about a new person?” you say, not conspicuously at all.

You really love Roxy. For a minute there you forgot you were moping uninterruptedly the past half-hour, as it happens on the rare instances where you allow yourself to reflect on your actions, as opposed to following the little guns-blazing forward-momentum voice of unclear origin in your head.

Zestful zygomaticus what’s this strain in your jaw?

“Hmmmmmmmm... You sure you’re ok? You got this anxious look goin’ on,” ever so perceptive.

“I’m just dandy, Roxy, I’m telling ya. A tad tired is all. My forsaken excuse of a protein refuses to work with me, but I’ll get it to eventually.”

“You gotta clear your head, Jakey. You bet you’ll get ideas on what to do when you’re not stressing over it,” they get their noodle soup out just before when the beep would have happened. “New guy’s an odd one. I feel you’d like him for some reason,” they tease.

“Why, thank you Roxy, I take it you mean my spiffing remarkable perplexity is a trait you admire in others.”

“Sure do. Sadly, I’m gonna have to dissipate from your general presence ‘cause these noodles are craving for my undivided attention, Jakey.”

“See ya Roxy.”

“Laters. And I really mean it, we gotta hang out soon. Don’t disappear on me,” they balance their plate in one hand as they do the whole fingers-travel-from-their-eyes-to-yours-back-and-forth theatre. “Good luck with the rest of your day, ok?”, shifting from a mock menacing expression to a sincere one in record time as they backtrack through the doorway.

You manage to shoot them a sheepish smile before they’re out of sight. Then you draw out a cartoonishly dramatic sigh and dry off your stuff and make your way down the hallway to get back to your lab.

June has decked out half the lab bench space with every gel electrophoresis apparatus you have. Early afternoon light makes itself known through the odd cutouts that filter through the nearly-covered-in-supplies windows. You really need to get a better storage system.

“Is that you, Jake? Haven’t seen you all day!” she says, eyes still latched onto the bromophenol blue-tinted samples she’s carefully loading in place.

“Heh, technically I suppose you still haven’t. What are you doing there, making a scale model of the city in plastic and polyacrylamide?”

June scoffs at you while you walk over to one of the computers on the side opposite of the room. For some senseless reason, you always feel an inordinate amount of anxiety over checking your email. Which prevents you from doing so, exacerbating your anxiety over the Schrödinger's state of your inbox. Just type in the digits why don’t you. Get it over with. There you go.  
Luckily, it seems none of the new messages are specifically addressed to you, just general institutional stuff. You leaf through the digital messages clearing stuff you won’t need — the physical is not the only storage that’s limited — people cancelling their reservation on some shared equipment, promoting a course you have no interest in, renting their apartment, welcoming a new PhD student-

Wait. Is that? Must be wishful thinking. Your cursor hovers over the little trash can as you scan back to confirm or shut down your delusion.

“From the Bioinformatics lab, we wanted to welcome our newest member, recent graduate data scientist Dirk Strider, who will be carrying out his PhD thesis in our institute.”

Ding ding ding. Now that’s a name you haven’t seen in a while. Other than the couple… hundred you’ve seen it stare back at you, left of a blinking text cursor in a search bar over the last few years, only to backtrack on yourself. Your thought process has turned into a pinball ricocheting in 37 different directions each turn. Simultaneously.

“Wow, Jake, don’t work so hard, man,” June says derisively while placing an elbow on your backrest. “Are you having a staring contest with the screen or what?”

“It’s just… you see, um. You know the new person in Roxy’s lab? I know him, well I used to. Well, I’ve never met him in the flesh you know but- but I did know him.”

“Internet friend?”

“Yeah, digital pen pals, bosom buds surfing through the interwebs.”

“Where did you get that one? A 1998 guide to the internet for kids?” She never once misses a chance to rib you a little. “How did you meet him? Don’t tell me you want to lock yourself in the lab to avoid an awkward encounter with someone who broke up with you over Club Penguin 13 years ago.”

“HA! No, no,” you make a point to bat that thought pinball away from wherever it was aiming to go. “I just liked rumagging through some movie forums and looking for some amenable contender to my takes, I never had much luck. I was so booored. One day comes this fellow with a schmancy philosophical username and the rest is history, as they say. Whatever I said, he got worked up about, and came back with an eight-paragraph essay in the replies. I loved riling him up, I think he caught on pretty fast but he kept doing it.”

“Dude, if you could see the huge smile on your face. Much better than the doom and gloom you were emanating 5 minutes ago. Why are you worried, anyway?”

“Well uh… it’s complicated. As you can imagine, we got on so well we kept talking outside the forums, for a very long time, up to about the end of high school which must have been… what, 6 years ago now? 7? Jeepers, I feel old. Anyway. Let’s say we fell apart after that. I tried contacting him but I always chickened out. He was a bit unpredictable. I made myself dizzy thinking in circles as to what to do. And years slipped by just like that.”

“Chin up, dude. I know it’s weird, but it’s been ages. Worst case scenario, he won’t remember you-” that is far worse than anything you’d considered so far, how did she even think of that? “- and if he does, it’s all water under the bridge. You’re older, in another context. Whatever it was, I’m sure you can talk it out if need be. Consider it a fresh start. You’ll be fine, Jake, stop catastrophizing in that head of yours.”

“You’re right! Ah, when did you get so wise June? Why do I feel like a proud father right now??”

“Why do you have to be so weird, we’re the same age.”

You wish your mood was a little more stable, but you’re not complaining. After that little pseudo-pep talk with June you feel semi-normal and completely capable of facing the rest of your day without any hitches or breakdowns. You might even get some work done, who would have guessed.

Speaking of which, you better go check on your cell culture. Kanaya’s been teaching you how to keep it since you’ve only worked in vitro so far, and you don’t have much to show for it.

You enter the biosafety level 1 cell culture area, grab the nameless labcoat you had reappropriated from the washing area from your cubby hole, as well as some latex gloves and a mask. After prepping a hood — aseptic rays of UV light doing their job — you retrieve your cells from the incubator and look at them under the microscope. They look happy, what you like to call them when they’ve got the right shape and distance from each other. Feels a little futile that you’re not running any experiments on these, it’s just your very first cell culture. Its only purpose is to prove you can keep them, for when you’ll actually need them. You almost feel like gloating, but you don’t want to jinx it and call upon yourself a succession of bacterial contaminations of mysterious origin.

Go do what you came here for: dilute the cells so they don’t suffocate each other and renew their growth factor and nutrient rich media under laminar flow, and put them back in the incubator. Reckless tumoral growth perfectly controlled by timely check-ups. After your done deed, you untrace your way here backwards and check your phone on your way out. It’s just past 3 p.m., you’ve got almost 2 hours until Jade’s thing.

It was easier to maintain focus there, there’s barely anyone in the area at this time and you got your simple little task, but out here? Your mind wanders unrestrained. What do you do now? You could run into him at any moment, what would you even say? What direction is your life going? Are your shoes untied? Drat, they are.

Back in the lab, you procrastinate on thinking about how to solve your protein conundrum by taking care of some thoughtless tasks around the room, like cleaning and putting stuff in order, while running a dirkcounter simulation in your head, not to much success. There’s too many factors to consider and your input information is out of date to say the least. You’re gonna have to wing it and hope for the best.

“Ah, there you are!” Kanaya walks in, arms loaded with a barrage of miscellaneous items. “That order we placed came in, Jane just let me know. Could you help me with it?”

“Why yes, we’ll be done anon, before the cock crows twice, if we work together.”

“You are so lucky everyone in this lab is odd enough to find your idiosyncrasies amusing, Jake,” she says in a perfectly nonchalant manner.

You run to grab some ice to place the items in for the time being before she says anything and get to work: you read off the labels one by one and she jots the relevant information down and tells you where everything goes, regardless of whether or not you knew in the first place.

By the time you’re done you barely have any time to do much else with your work day. Figuratively hanging your labcoat (you wear the physical thing less often than you probably should) you figure it’s time to go get your mutant baby plant, which you mention to Kanaya.

“Oh that is just positively lovely. Where will you carry it home?”

“...” hamster-wheel turning.

“Uh, I didn’t think about that.”

“Come along, there might be something in the kitchen.”

You grab your backpack and follow suit — you snatch a couple leftover plastic containers people had left out drying to later recycle, and head out to the inner patio.

The stairs are dim at this hour, without either of you turning on the timed-lights, interspersed with dashes of orange filtering in from the narrow windows. Kanaya sprints ahead of you down the hallway and reaches the door. Outside — the outside that’s inside, you suppose — there’s a small group of people, heads bowed over earthy grids, green inklings of life sprouting in regular intervals.

Jade had set these up on tables she must have _borrowed_ from the nearby multi-purpose hall. You can see her towering over everyone on the other side of the tables, curls framed by the mango grove of one behind her. She’s animatedly poking around the small plants, handing them to each person one-by-one while, you gather, letting them know the optimal amount and frequency of sunlight, water and phosphate levels suited for each variety’s biologic clock or how to boost their defenses against pathogens or whatever plant biologists go on about. You swear you paid some attention in the last 5 seminars, something surely must have stuck there.

Right in front of her, there’s a haze of blonde hair carefully trained into shape. Your gaze travels downwards and you can make out the graceful but sturdy frame of a young man, a bit of his brown neck framed by the sunlight.

Instinctively scooting over behind your labmate, the picture of a line of ducklings appears in your mind. Kanaya notices your sudden reticence and you bring her up to speed on your current personal riddle.

“Ah, the tender strain of attachment,” you feel your face heating up. “I can commiserate with your turmoil.”

“You can?” She’s always been a pensive, sensitive soul, that part is not hard to believe. “You seem so… well, happy. Stable?”

Did she just laugh at that last word specifically? “You didn’t know me before I married my wife. I’ve always been quite… obsessive with my passions. Particularly when it comes to matters of affection and romantic pursuit. I unnecessarily put myself through some hardship.” You listen in rapt attention, like you’re being made privy to a precious secret. “Remind me to tell you about the time I was courting my wife. And well, frankly, some stunted dalliances earlier as well.”

Lost in that — you’d never thought this adjective would apply — amenable chat about feelings, you almost let go of the swirling sensation that comes with adrenaline, the twist in your stomach, drained of its share of blood flow.

The line up to Jade has just about cleared out by now and there he is, holding a rare tomato seedling in a plastic cup, engaging Jade in conversation. He still wears those goofy triangular shades you remember from his pictures in his austere-yet-covered-in-his-interests seaside apartment room he sent you over the years. They’re a tad small on him now.

“You see _Solanum lycopersicum_ can vary in sweetness according to its fructose levels so I’m not sure if...“ he prattles in a slight drawl.

“Is he…?” Kanaya manages to start while you let out a snort, “trying to outplant the plant biologist?”, she posits, the very image of discretion personified, carefully placed hand hovering near her mouth and all.

You two watch the kerfuffle in amusement, Jade going over every point and countering it with... actual citations. Everyone else seems to have given up on getting their customized plant-care spiel and gone on their merry way after scooping a plant or two while this was going on.

That leaves you rather uh, exposed. Jade audibly sighs and surprisingly, the fellow thanks her for the tomato plant and meandering discussion before turning his gaze away. Away and right into yours.

His silly glasses partially obscure the dumbfounded expression on his face. You can’t imagine yours is much better, though at least you had fair warning.

After a few seconds too long of electrifying silence, he speaks up. “Jake?”

The shoujo sparkles you’d picture in a mental reenactment of this scene would dissipate right about now, because you’re at a loss as to how to talk to him. It used to be so easy, at the start anyway, when you were just kids indulging each other’s bullshit.

“The very same. Well they do say we swap around all the atoms of our bodies what, every 7 years or so? So, in a way I’m not?” You become the embodiment of the thinking emoji. “But I do still respond to that name and have all the relevant memories to carry over a sense of identity, so, yes. For all effects and purposes I’m me, Dirk. Gotta say I didn’t expect to see you, least here of all places? I hear you’re working with Roxy? They’re a good friend of mine, you’re in excellent hands.” So much for being at a loss for words. What was that verbal equivalent of a bullet train speeding off out of its tracks?

“Out of the two of us I would have thought I’d be the first to throw out a molecular ship of Theseus ramble upon the first minute of meeting in person. But you’ve always been full of surprises.”

You sure hope the disproportionate eddies of thought that rise out of his small praise don’t show up on your cheeks.

“And yeah, I’m starting a doctorate in their lab. Can’t say I know shit about biology but it’s just another pool of data I can sink my fingers into.” He gets a little closer to you, holding his baby tomato plant underhanded. “Anyway English, guess I’ll see you around?” You can almost hear the gears in his head turning as to how to greet you. He lamely settles on an awkward fist bump to your shoulder.

“-course.” You follow his speedy sprint into the building with your eyes.

Well uh, that could have gone much worse? Kanaya nudges you for you two to get your plants already and Jade is watching you with an amused grin.

“What was THAT? You know the insufferable poser that came out of nowhere explaining the environmental constraints for growing black tomato cultivars to me?”

“Yeah, afraid it’s somewhat of a long story, though. Kanaya here just got the cliff-notes version.”

“In summary: they were friends. Haven’t been in contact in years,” Kanaya puts ever so succinctly.

“Can’t say it wasn’t kinda fun though, better this than reply guys on the internet.”

“Tell me about it,” your labmate responds. Your chatter scatters into virtual social etiquette and later Jade fills you in on her plants. You both end up with a good number of them, splitting the leftover ones between the two of you. They look so frail with nothing but a bit of water-soaked paper and a bit of soil wrapped around their roots.

Upon arriving home, you drop your backpack on the floor and place the plastic container holding new life on your kitchen (and only) table. Collapsing on the sofa, you vaguely ponder something should be done about the plants. Something that would involve you moving. Promptly, before the tray becomes part of the background of your daily living, revoking it from its status as an object that can be acted upon, forever just another feature of your table, as it happens.

Just like in a video game, you’d wager, but you’re not much of what can be called a “gamer”. You do figure the item would despawn before leaving you with the rotting corpses of baby plants though.

In an uncharacteristic flurry, you get up and find a place for them. You burrow a few small holes on the lone pot by the window and place the plants gingerly, one by one. After naming the smallest basil plant Alfredo, because he feels like one, you burrow your face on your arms yourself and look outside the window. It’s been a long day.

\---

You rise with the dread of anticipating your failure. Yesterday, you purified your protein, meaning today is crystallization day. Except you’ve never obtained a mere miserable crystal in your entire time working in this lab.

That’s not true, the controls work just fine. You’ve gone through the whole process and gotten beautiful little lysozyme cubes. But that’s baby’s first crystallography, this day and age at least. You bet it wasn’t for Edward Abraham in 1937. To think the stuff’s in your tears.

Your silly protein, an incidental find with odd properties from your predecessor in the lab, refuses to behave predictably. You’d think this would be a good challenge for the noggin but you’ve just about had it with it. You’re not really thinking much these days, just mechanically going through practiced motions.

Back in the lab, under laminar flow, you place sodium acetate buffer in rows of wells, placing a scoop of grease on the edges. You carefully pipette a droplet containing the source of your woes on a coverslip and flip it over one of the wells, sealing a little chamber where the acidic and saturated conditions would slowly dehydrate the protein forcing it to form crystals. Rinse and repeat for the other wells.

Lady Luck is not on your side. Hours pass by just idly checking the wells with an inverted microscope. Still nothing.

“You know, it makes no sense to do the exact same thing twice — or shit dude, 50 times — and expect different results. Makes you kinda wack if you think about it,” says an echo in your head. Why are you finding comfort in filtering your thoughts through Dirk? He only came back to your life a day ago. “Quit it with the trite ready-made I-got-this-off-a-Goodreads-page-of-misattributed-to-Einstein quotes. I’ve... tried things,” you mutter to no one, very convincingly. “Besides, this is biology. Pretty sure that phrase doesn’t exactly hold up all the time in practice, not even most of the time really. Not that you’d know that.”

What is it exactly that you’re doing? This is what your life’s come to. Can’t say you’re exactly surprised. Besides, that dirk-voice could use some work, you think. Better talk to the real deal soon. He seemed pretty eager to flee the scene yesterday, and you don’t really know what to make of that.

Lunch with June and Kanaya makes you feel regular again. The open window lets the breeze swoosh into the tiny kitchen. You overstay your time there a bit, chatting about an old movie about homicidal alien clowns that June recently watched, which Kanaya had a less than favourable opinion on. All the while, you’re fiddling with the peel of the tangerine you’re eating.

Roxy comes round the corner, trailed by people from their lab among which is now Dirk, of course. They greet you as enthusiastically as ever and officially re-introduce you to Dirk, though he has already filled them in on your brief encounter yesterday. There’s no mention of your acquaintance prior to this. Dirk bores holes with his eyes in the direction of your hands and you wonder if he’s barely containing himself from listing at you the detriments of having fruit as dessert right after eating.

There’s not much space in the kitchen so when they’re about to turn the way they came to find another place to sit you offer your places since you were just about done anyway. Your eyes linger on him on your way out.

\---

Days seem to speed by soon after, blending together, as it happens from time to time. Every day you just water your plants, make yourself some tea, grab a toast and walk to the lab. You prove yourself competent with cell culture, and Kanaya asks you for a couple experiments which you happily do in the spirit of collaboration. You even go out of your way and find a couple papers with protocols that might be interesting to adapt. When it comes to your own project though, absolutely no insights come your way, even after long hours of staring at a screen displaying the particular string of aminoacids that makes up your protein of study as if waiting for divine illumination.

You busy these bouts of nothingness with your allotted share of lab duties, mostly filling up tip boxes and preparing bacterial growth medium in erlenmeyer flasks and sending them off to the autoclave. June repeatedly tells you to ease up on the stock up, you have more than enough for the time being.

In one of these trips to the autoclave, you bump into Jade, who lovingly inquires about your wellbeing and fills you in on her last few days and a couple of mad ideas. You’re just about done loading off the last of your tip containers in the autoclave when she tells you she’s been talking to your childhood friend who she describes as “a giant dweeb”. If you don’t feel a pang of jealousy, it’s something close. Inadequacy? You’re going to leave that one unlabeled. Jade pats you on the back and reminds you you still need to pick a place for your yearly camping trip which is coming up on her way out. You sure appreciate how she doesn’t let you fly the coop, for some unbeknownst reason.

It’s not like you’ve been avoiding Dirk, exactly. Not actively, at least. Shoot, maybe he wants you to come to him? Or maybe he’s not thinking about you at all? Ugh, where did he find this capacity to take over your mind, without even doing anything? Just the knowledge that he’s a few doors down the hall a big chunk of the time of your daily existence is driving you a little mad.

You even walk over there a few times, thinking of an excuse on the spot. Why yes, you need to look at the DNA ladder reference chart they don’t have stuck to a wall you can easily look up online. Or ask if their access to the institutional email is also down. They’re the computer wizzes after all, though Roxy reminds you they are not IT, and that department is in fact downstairs.

Dirk’s not given you much to work with, though he does listen to your every request and more often than not, points you to a solution.

One time, when one of the protocols you found for the collab with Kanaya involves a pretty long time-course and you don’t feel like staying late, you come in extra early. It’s just past 8 a.m. when Dirk improbably knocks on your doorframe asking for a stapler.

He’s pulled his bangs back, some stubborn shorter strands framing his face. Somehow the exposed ample forehead makes him look even more handsome, you think. Oh shoot, he asked you a direct question, didn’t he? He’s still looking at you expectantly.

“What d’ya say, a stapler? There’s several downstairs in the library, my lad. What kind do you need?”, you obligingly show him the way. The kind librarian lady has not yet arrived, so you take over the task of taking them out of the cabinet for him.

He gets his papers neatly stapled, thanks you, and goes out the glass doors — leaving you standing there stupidly, wishing he would stay a little longer.

\---

Take it from the top. You’re starting the entire process again and first you need to generate enough mass of protein, so you make bacteria your miniature protein factories. Before you do that, though, you need to make sure you keep a good stock of the genetic material that codes for said protein.

Long story short, you got a bit swaddled with activities and it’s 8 p.m. and you find yourself in need of assistance. You’ve gone through the trouble of permeating membranes and getting the accursed DNA in the bacteria, and want to save quite a bit of this material so you can skip over the first step next time.

That means you’ve got to freeze the little fellas. Fuming liquid nitrogen container? Check. Glycerol to make the bacteria not die in contact with the extreme cold? Check. The only problem? Well, see, glycerol’s pretty toxic itself so you’ve got to get the tubes in the nitrogen as soon as you’ve put the glycerol in, and you’ve only got so many hands.

You go on a quest through the hall darting your gaze into every lab in search of any living soul. Seems everyone’s got the good sense to be at home by now. Nearly defeated, you hear intermittent bouts of typing. Roxy’s lab. You hop along and hover around the doorframe.

Surely enough, there’s Dirk, hunched over a computer emblazoned with an insensate number of the fluorescent husks of caffeinated beverages. You take a mental note of this since it clashes with his usual straight-laced attitude towards bodily processes-altering substances.

“Hey there neighbour. Don’t mean to be a bother, you must be up to really important business there with your... algorithms and doodads but we’re the only buffoons still here at this time and I was wondering if you could lend me a hand?”

He turns and blinks at you a few times while you figure you’re probably not the only one who could benefit from human contact in the general vicinity.

“Jake.” He looks startled. “Yeah, sure. Give me a sec. Sit down, man,” he says, grasping at the bridge of his nose. He clears a stool which he’d been using to hold an assortment of papers, seemingly embarrassed that you caught him in a less-than-perfectly-crafted presentation.

“You know, I wouldn’t have put it past you to wear your shades inside. Guess seeing you don’t breaks the mystique a little. Which is a good thing, mind you.” You think you see him quirk a microscopic smile, but he’s still focused on the screen. “Um- What are you working on anyway?”

“Right now? I have a shitload of data and not much context or information. Basically got handed this huge database on protein interactions and not much of a clue what to do with it. You gotta start probing it until it confesses its secrets but, well there’s not much use in that if you don’t have good questions in the first place right? So in summation I am poking it more or less at random which I am admittedly not very proud of.”

“Sorry to hear that chuckaboo. Maybe you need to get away from it for a while? Shoot the haze and the ideas will come when least you expect them.” You might have internalised Roxy’s advice a little too hard.

“You know, when you say that, it sounds like I can believe it,” he says as he closes every forsaken window. “I wasn’t getting much done right now anyway. Let’s go do your thing, what do you need?”

“Follow me! I’ll catch you up on the way there.”

Dirk swiftly rises from his chair and scoots it under the desk, a gesture that stands in stark contrast with the haphazard landscape of his desk.

As you traverse the corridor you clue him in about what you’re doing.

“-basically I need a hand getting these little fellas to go for a swim in liquid nitrogen so they don’t die on me.”

“Got it.”

You reach your lab and point out all the relevant things, including a pair of goggles, which you extend to him, and later spray your hands with 70% ethanol. You’re about to start pipetting when he grabs your shoulder. “Wait dude, aren’t you even going to wear a labcoat? Or gloves?”

After a couple flummoxed seconds, you respond “Oh, right! You’re new. We don’t wear labcoats much around here unless the situation really calls for it, say ‘yeah there’s a considerably greater chance of corroding my flesh pipetting pure hydrochloric acid without a few extra layers in between, let’s not be too reckless’ but otherwise it’s pretty much for show? Don’t let the biosafety commission hear that, they won’t like it. As for the gloves, well I don’t usually work with them when handling bacteria since- '' you sputter out and gesture to the bunsen burner. “But you did see me spray my hands with alcohol, I’m not a heathen.”

He looks at you, wearing an unreadable expression on his face. Like he’s both confused and impressed that there’s reasoning behind the inconsistencies of your lab practices, or so you speculate.

You pipette glycerol into the first tube, pass it on to Dirk, who pops it closed and lets it drop into the liquid, fizzing sounds soon following as it dances on the surface. You two soon get into a good rhythm, which could fare as the background beat for a makeshift experimental music genre.

Feeling at ease with the mechanic repetition of your task in his company, your mind wanders to years back; to invigorating conversations madly shooting off tangents and non-sequiturs, to dubious tentative flirtation mired by rituals and pretences neither of you fully understood, to perilous flights of fancy, at least in your part. A warm feeling rises from your chest — cripes, you can’t believe he’s here.

“So how long d’ya think it will be until you make it?”, your mouth seemingly running a fully formed sentence before your brain could catch up.

“Huh?”

“You know, you were always saying one day you’ll make a human-level AI. And before you say anything — don’t tell me it was a pipe-dream, bud, if anyone will do it I believe in full confidence it will be you.”

Dirk takes a second longer to close the lid and his gaze lingers on the falling eppendorf tube. “Um, yeah. You could still say it’s the guiding watchman setting the course in my mind-boat, pipe-dream or not. Cranking up a working estimation as to when for you right now seems to be beyond my capabilities though.”

“Man, I remember the cool stuff you used to make. Left me like I’d witnessed a magic trick, no matter how you’d explain to me what you’d done. Do you still have the makings of those old chatbots and whatnot stored in some harddrive or something?? Ah, and you hadn’t even received formal education on it then. Self-made man. Can’t imagine what you can do now!” He always got carried away with his projects, which you found endearing.

Dirk visibly swallows. You notice he seems conflicted by your flattery, but can’t for the life of you figure out where you went wrong. You meant every word so very sincerely, but the smile now plastered on your face is more than a bit overcompensatory.

You almost hope he does something, anything, to break the odd tension that you are probably responsible for building up but he follows along and answers your question: “Every one. It’s been the sort of knowledge base that builds up on itself. Wouldn’t want to take the foundation away and make the whole thing tumble down.”

Even if he won’t admit it upfront, you bet he’s got his fare of sentimentality holding onto them too though. He once sampled every My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fic ever written to build a procedurally generated text adventure. Which uh, took a lot of finagling to be functional.

You settle into silence once again, you almost can’t bear the stuntedness of his responses to your prodding, so you stop doing it. The odd swirl of familiarity and strangeness is making you dizzy.

You’re just about done wrapping up with the bacteria when one of the tubes pops open on the surface of the liquid nitrogen. You promptly scoop it up and close it before it dips over its side.

“DUDE. That stuff’s at like negative 190ºC or something,” he looks at you alarmed.

“Pish-posh, it’s fine if you go in and out quickly enough. Look, cold burns? Ni un poquito,” you say while holding your hands in front of his face for him to inspect while you flip them back and forth.

To your surprise, he laughs — the first time you’ve ever witnessed it in person — and holds your hands in his, thumbs sweeping palms.

He lets go. You wish he didn’t. “Sure, this time you didn’t get any. Don’t do that again though, I’m serious.”

“Yessiree. And I know who to go to if I ever slip up.” You’re feeling a little bolder.

You could swear the tips of his ears go red at that, but he is quick to brush it away. The two of you finish up the remaining two tubes and go through the laborious task of scooping them up, with tweezers this time, and placing them in a box to be taken to an ultrafreezer. When you are done with your round trip to the room where the ultrafreezer is, you notice Dirk’s waiting for you, leaning on a desk, cross-body bag on. He must have gone back and fetched it, lightning speed.

“I’m closing up here, do you want to - erm?” Eloquent as ever. “I mean, I’m not privy as to where your chambers are but I figure we could at least walk part of our way there in tandem?”

He gives you a small nod and waits for you to put away what you left on the lab bench and lock up the lab. You don’t pass by a single individual on your way down, except for the night watchman who makes you sign a big logbook because of your late departure from the premises. You follow Dirk down the dimly-lit stairs to the basement to retrieve his bike. Labyrinthine corridors house several-decades-old equipment and various scrap material of mysterious origin. While you’re busy eyeing your strange surroundings — you really don’t come down here much — Dirk’s gone out of sight and back, tagging along a black hybrid bicycle with bright yellow-orange accents by the handlebars.

The two of you go up the ramp and you hold the magnetic-card-activated door open for him. The chilly night air on your bare forearms is a welcome respite in these summer months. Setting out for the periphery of the nearby park, you swerve past a surprising number of people, mostly families with small children and late-evening joggers.

Having only exchanged a few words as to where you were respectively heading, you walk side by side rounding the park, the rattle of Dirk’s bike by his side a third companion. You glance at him, back to looking stoic as ever, shades back on masking his face.

There’s a couple twenty-somethings doing pullups hanging from monkey bars. You pass by a natural history museum you’ve never seen the inside of, and by the now locked book stalls that Dirk nevertheless tries to snoop out. Despite yourself, you start entertaining the idea of engaging in these activities with Dirk at a later time, hope careening off of you. The feeling’s mixed with an uncomfortable gnawing uneasiness. You feel silly, foolish really, wanting these things when you can barely hold yourself together and besides, who knows how long you’d be happy with all that if you had it. To top it off, you’d have bet your colleague here is mostly tolerating you and holding himself back from telling you just how you’ve fucked up eleven times today alone already. It’s fine really. You just have to manage to be happy with your lot.

“Hey, are you alright?” his voice interrupts your spiral of self-pity. Something on your face must have given you away.

“Oh, I was just thinking, getting lost in the old noodle.”

“Want to share?”

He’s being so patient with you. A selfish part of you wants to bask in the glimpses of concern he shows like a plant under rain after a long drought, but another remembers his restraint and apparent discomfort earlier. You really don’t want to push your luck and scare him away.

“Trust me, it’s not worth getting your brain cogs rattled over, I can get carried away with flights of fancy and mourn the loss of imaginary escapades in record time, my good metal cavaliere. I’m a bit ridiculous like that.”

“Jake. I don’t want to have to pull out a succession of handkerchiefs out of your mouth like the world’s most unprepared magician’s assistant but, come on, try me. Something’s clearly bothering you.”

“I could say the same thing about you, you know.” Oh boy.

“What do you mean?”

“Back in the lab, don’t think I didn’t notice, you just had this… look whenever I would mention stuff years past. Is this really ok, Dirk? Are you alright seeing me here nearly every day?” Your throat feels tight.

He slows down, bike-rattle tempo rallentando to a halt. “I- Of course I am, Jake.” He grips the handles a bit tighter. “Exorbitantly more than alright. You think I didn’t dream of this back when we were kids?”

Your heartbeat drums in your ears. “But then why…?”

“I don’t want to fuck this up, Jake. Like last time,” the volume of his voice in diminuendo.

What? Seriously, what? You let out an anti-climactic snicker. “Consarn it, Dirk! I think we’re both ripsorting idiots. Are you seriously blaming yourself for that? Please, you were ever the upstanding gent, I was the one who kept flip-flopping every avenue like pancakes, not knowing what was wrong with me.”

Dirk slowly raises your gaze to meet yours. His shades have somewhat slid down his nose and you can get a better look at the sterling care and affectation painted on his lovely visage.

“You’re right,” he says after a beat. “We are both idiots. Look at us talking past each other and tiptoeing around lava. Look, we might have both messed up but we were kids, and there’s nothing wrong with you having wanted some space or not knowing how you felt.” He kicks out the kickstand and lets go of the handles. “Come here.” His hands reach for you but he waits for you to meet him halfway.

Dirk gets crushed by your hug. After correcting on the pressure, you just stay there soothing each other, hands running on his back.

After about a minute you ease out of the hug. “It’s not wise for you to leave your bike like that, you’re going to get robbed.” You shoot him what you hope is a dazzling smile. He gives you a small one back while grasping the maneuver back. “Thank you Dirk. I think I needed that.”

“Anytime, bro.”

Hopefully no one stared at your little streetside opera, not that you care all that much. You resume your walk until you reach where you’re supposed to veer off.

“Well, this is me. My apartment’s just around the bend over there. I take it you still have a ways to go?”

“Yeah I’m about 10 minutes on bike from here.”

“Ok, make it home safe.” You give him another hug, just a quick one this time, before you part ways.

All the way to your flat you let yourself hope, unrestrained.

\---

Alfredo is looking _resplandescent_ come morning. Just about caught up with his fellow basils in height. You mix up some abominable but delicious concoction with mint, ginger, a stray teabag and instant coffee. Maybe you’ll grind up some basil leaves and throw them in when the plants have grown enough, why not?

You go to work with such a spring to your step José Carioca quakes in his… parrot feet.

Kanaya greets you from her desk, while deeply immersed in her phone.

“What’s got your brow so furrowed?”

“My wife won’t stop beating me at chess. I can’t have this.”

“Are you using the horsies? Those are the best.”

“Yes, thanks for your input Jake. I am using the horsies. She just always gets me with the diagonals.”

“Hmm. Have you tried eating all her pieces? Or making an incomprehensible move to psyche her out? That’s the extent of my chess wisdom.”

“Ah. She’s got me. Again. Well, enough stalling, I’ve got to get to work.”

“Better luck next time.”

“Thank you.”

You both get to work, which in your case involves putting together a little presentation for a meeting your PI asked for to talk about your progress with your thesis project which has been… nonexistent. The upside of that is it doesn’t take you that long except, well, you should probably think of avenues to continue. Soon. Preferably.

“Hey Jake,” a soft, flat voice startles you from your seat.

“Cripes, dude, you scared me,” a stupid, inevitable grin sprouting from your face. “What are you doing here?”

“What, you can’t believe I just came to say hello?”, he says mockingly. It’s embarrassing how such a small thing sends your insides swimming. You’ve left a lot of things unsaid with Dirk, but you can feel something shifted yesterday. Like you’re finally on the same page.

“Why, hello to you too.” Dirk... doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself which is uncharacteristic to say the least. “Welp, I can’t just have you standing there while I’m trying to work. Either sit down and get yourself something out of my drawer or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“I... guess I could spare a few minutes.”

“Good. It’s that one right over there.”

He walks to where you’re pointing and after looking around returns with a cereal bar. “You’re going to rot your teeth out, you have so much candy in there. Oh and, thanks,” he gestures with the cereal bar and seats beside you.

“No problemico Teodorico.”

“...Teodorico?”

“Yeah you know, like the result of putting your name through Google translate a couple dozen times.” He snickers uncontrollably at that which is a Dirk equivalent for an uproarious laughter. Oh, what you would give to hear that more often.

“Oh man. What are you working on?”, he manages to say when he comes to.

You make a few gaping sounds. “Well…”, your gestures rivaling every Italian grandpa on Earth. “Where to begin. Basically I’m flummoxed about how to obtain crystals of my protein of study, I’ve been for months, and I’m…” You check your wristwatch. “-four hours away from a meeting with my PI and no idea what to tell him.”

He taps away at your desk. “I’ve got a proposition.”

“I’m pricking up my ears bro. Focusing my audio.”

“You might have noticed we’re both pretty stumped. How about we help each other out?”, he takes a bite out of his treat while he waits for your response.

“How much do you know about X-ray crystallography?”

“That it... exists.”

You both laugh like a couple of headless chickens. “Ok, we’re pretty much matched there with how much I know about bioinformatics. Perfect.”

You shake on it and exchange a few words on how to devise your plan.

“What if we slump down to the library and unwind for a bit? We can grab a table for ourselves and splay out all the mad sticky notes and doodles we want and survey our respective state of affairs. Oh, do you have a laptop we could take? Um- I mean, all the while if you have time right now, don’t want to monopolize your day,” you veer off and scratch the back of your head.

“Jake. There’s nothing I’d want more. Besides, I did offer.”

You like this new directness but it’s taking a toll on your digestive system. You ponder whether he has any idea the effects he causes on you; you posit he most likely does, your reactions not being particularly subtle. Although then again, knowing Dirk, it’s not impossible he’d interpret everything in a way that was least favourable towards himself. Hm. Better return back to treading on solid ground.

“OH, right! Heh well it’s dire we retire before we expire, my squire,” you say adding a flourish _and_ a wink.

You grab all stray semi-relevant publications and some scrap paper and after a stop in Dirk’s lab to get his laptop you make your way downstairs. Setting up the scene basically as you described, you fill him in on what is known about your protein of study. It’s established as a transcription factor related to the homeostasis of different metal ions, but no one’s managed to figure much else thus far and people seem to have lost interest in it. You’re probably the leading figure in this minute cutout of science, funny how granular things can get.

He makes humming nodding noises at the appropriate times and after a while his face lights up. Without saying anything, he snatches his computer and starts typing as soon as it boots up. He flips it over to you — it’s all quite cinematic, you’d say — and says: “Dude, I’ve got a whole database here I didn’t know what to do with. Check it out, your elusive lil’ pal is here.”

“You’re a genius, we can screen for interactors! Darn, I could plant a smacker on your kisser right now!” Oh. Got a little carried away there didn’t you.

“Don’t hold yourself back.” The corner of his mouth quirks up.

You erupt in nervous laughter and look around. “Uh, let’s. Put a raincheck on that one.”

The librarian looks at you with stern eyes, you must have made quite the racket. You settle into a quick back and forth, him asking you things and you answering to the best of your abilities. You filter out the data for proteins involved in biological processes relevant to your protein and end up reducing a list of hundreds to about 8 candidates, some of which you already knew — which is a good way of telling what you’re doing isn’t complete nonsense — and others which are new. It’s about lunchtime by the time you get there.

You gather your stuff and tell Dirk about cocrystallization while ascending the stairs, how the thought of trying to form crystals involving another component like another protein or a small ligand had crossed your mind but hadn’t really — pardon the pun — crystallized, since it just seemed like needless complication at the time. But it makes all the sense in the world now.

After you both put your things away, you posit: “They say this is the worst time of day to be out under the sun but I’ve been meaning to go gallivanting to the terrace one of these days and I’d wager there’s a spot or two more secluded anyway over there. What d’ya say bro, want to go yonder and have lunch? With me, that is.” As if you weren’t already stuck like glue today.

June and Kanaya cross your path on their way to the kitchen and give you knowing smiles. Admittedly, you feel a bit like a schoolboy right now. Guess you missed out on doing stuff like... this. Whatever this is.

“I’d love to, man,” he says in a soft tone. You heat up your hake filet and vegetable stew and Dirk his takeover wonton soup, neither particularly summer-friendly foods, and take the elevator.

The roof tiles bewilderingly have thin gaps between them, seemingly being suspended by their corners. They are surprisingly solid, still. The surface is riddled with extractor vents here and there, and on one side there’s a room or two, almost like a little house on top of the building proper. You truly would like a word with this place’s architect. Dirk paces over to the other edge, where there’s a silly weather vane. He’s put on the blasted shades again. You follow after him and get a good view of the park you rounded together yesterday, lush vegetation, observatory and all, as well as a nearby hospital and other buildings you haven’t put a name to.

“Not bad eh?”

After exploring some more, you set camp in the shade of the roof-house. You kick back and pick at your food, enjoying each other’s company. Your chatter meanders over a variety of topics — you point out the odd looking wavy building in the distance, he goes on a tangent on heat haze, which leads you to various movies, of course, that use the trope of desert-ridden sadsacks envisioning mirages — and then it hits you you’ve never asked him the most basic of questions.

“Say Dirk, how come you’re here? Not on this here roof since we are both well aware, just, in general.”

“You mean how come I got this job? Let’s say I was disillusioned with the landscape of opportunities in more traditional avenues. University was useful, I’ll give it that, and there’s an infinitude of possibilities for data science but it often feels like the most brilliant minds go into shit like how to increase the public’s engagement with a company? I wasn’t crazy for that to be honest. I guess I just grabbed what I could from uni and figured I’d make my own way. When I saw the position here and figured it’d be good to throw in a bit of a wildcard and shake up my working knowledge. Boosts creativity and such. Comes handy when you least expect it.”

You chew at your fish, enthralled by his monologue. “Besides…” he fusses with his chopsticks.

Oh. Dirk rattles his hand uselessly in front of him. “Uh. Nevermind. I don’t know how to make this sound not weird.”

You get a little closer and make an inquisitive hum to encourage him to continue.

“I swear I was pretty set on it already before I knew, but knowing there was a non-zero chance of running into you here kind of sealed the deal for me.”

His anxiety over how you’d read his intentions is understandable, but unwarranted. You just about melt when you hear this.

“What? Stop giving me those puppy eyes dude,” Dirk says, but his smile betrays him.

“Diiiiiirk… you like me,” you poke at him, the juvenile approach making it easier to broach such subjects.

“Was it not obvious?”

There’s a beat of silence. Your playfulness dies down.

“Not… always? But uh, I’m not sure how much of that is just my mind playing tricks on me running a marathon in no sleep. I very much enjoy your company, I’m chuffed it’s mutual.”

He brushes a few strands of hair off his forehead and pats his near empty bowl with his chopsticks.

“I also never asked you the same thing, you know?”

“If I like you?” You miiight be doing that on purpose.

“N- no. How you got here, I meant.”

“OH. That’s a good question actually. Uh… it’s not much of a reasoned thing like yours, it was mostly following my own curiosity and saying yes to things. Also Jade let me know they were looking for a biochemist in this lab and that seemed good, so. That’s that.”

“That’s not bad that you’re open to possibilities. Just be mindful of what you want and that it doesn’t get muffled in there.”  
You study him in awe. “Nice to get a reminder,” you bump your shoulder with his. “Thank you.”

You’re just about done with your food when a slight breeze blows through the terrace. You set your containers aside and stay sat there, heads resting on the wall.

“So, about that raincheck. Is it refundable at any moment?” your heart picks up its pace.

“Yeah. You sure?” your hand hovers over the side of Dirk’s face until your fingers brush his jaw.

“If you don’t mind your fish breath.”

“Not at all.”

Reaching to raise his shades over his hair like a headband, your gaze lowers to his lips you reach down and meet them with your own. It’s a little clumsy at first but you don’t care in the slightest. It’s him. It’s him.

You wonder if you’re burning the candle at both ends, leaving you with nothing but melted wax before you know it. Then again, even if you are, you’re built of more solid stuff than that. He’s your dear bud. And you’ve been in love with him for so long you can’t remember what not being in love with him feels like. You like your odds.

You finally part and he immediately gives you a peck on the cheek. You don’t know if it’s the rush of new developments or if you’re just naturally cloying like that together, but your mind is going on a flurry of gushy thoughts, and you find you don’t hate yourself for that. He interlaces the fingers of his left hand with one of yours and you just stay there for a moment contemplating each other.

“Oh shit, you’ve got a meeting in like 15 minutes don’t you? Go dazzle ‘em.”

“Ok yes but. We’re addressing this later,” you gesture vaguely between you two.

“What is there to address?”

“Dirk.” You give him a flat look.

“Kidding. Relax, Jake. I’m not going anywhere, figuratively speaking.”

Not too eager to leave this safe little space-time haven, you steal another quick kiss before rising up and getting to the rest of your day.

Your PI ends up loving the cocrystallization idea and praises your proactive attitude, which he says is a welcome change. Ouch. You’ll take it.

\---

The following months are spent asking around for the proteins you need and going through the same steps as earlier, now with more players in the game. Your and Dirk’s labmates get used to seeing the other half of your pair around frequently. Dirk even gives Kanaya actual good chess pointers and she manages to beat her wife once and never stops gloating about it for a whole week.

The day you first see little shards staring back at you through the microscope you nearly scream. There are several wells holding different combinations of your protein and the others, and there’s distinct looking crystals in most of them.

Your working theory consists of your protein being in a constant state of flux moving around in different conformations, which get locked in place by all these interactors. You’ve sent the crystals to a facility with an X-ray diffractometer and are awaiting the results to get back when one morning Dirk bursts through the door.

“Jake. You’ve got to see this, it’s insane.”

“Ah, ah,” you tap at your lips. He indulges you and greets you with a chaste kiss. “Ok what is it?”

He gets in front of the computer and loads up a video explaining the newest artificial intelligence software capable of predicting protein structure as well as traditional lab methods. You sit through all near 8 minutes of the video and air leaves your lungs.

“Damn. That’s unbelievable they’d get so good already!!!” thoughts are zooming past you. “I can’t believe machines and your lot are going to take over my job soon enough and make me obsolete.”

Dirk laughs, the sound of it never gets old. “Nah. I bet your cursed protein would defy even this software. I’d give it another decade, at least.”

“We’ll see about that, pumpkin. I’m living off of you if it comes down to it, at least until I become well versed enough into your robot-y business if need be.”

“This is shameless exploitation.”

“It’s not if you love me and do it out of the goodness in your heart.” You throw your arms around him, deep in your soap-opera shindig. He pretends to want to squirm away for but a second.

You might have your head buried on the ground as to what the future holds, but you feel up for the challenge of finding out with him by your side.

**Author's Note:**

> That software and video are in fact, [real](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg7WjuFs8F4).
> 
> Thanks for reading!! This event had my brain wires connecting and finally made me write fiction which is something I wanted to do for a good while now. Many thanks to [Brennan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brennan4/pseuds/Brennan4) for the data science feedback, Katia [@chronotopics](https://twitter.com/chronotopics) for their stellar beta-ing, as well as everyone else who commented on it and helped me improve it; and my writerly friends whose words have been constant brain food and inspiration for the past year, some of whose chess talk I stole.
> 
> You can find me on twitter at [@aslanZounder](https://twitter.com/aslanZounder)


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